Wine Bible

I just finished A.J.
Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically, which recounts his adventures
living strictly according to every law found in both the Hebrew and
Christian testaments. I don’t personally take a lot of the Bible as
literally true, but his memoir is a fascinating (and funny) read.

When
his wife becomes pregnant and asks him to swear off booze with her, the
biblically mandated rules concerning alcohol consumption become an
issue. Pondering his response, Jacobs notes a study by “conservative
Christian oenophile Daniel Whitfield,” who has apparently identified
247 alcohol references in Judeo-Christian scripture and found the
majority — nearly 60 percent— are generally positive, while only about
16 percent are negative. (The rest are categorized as neutral.) In the
end, he decides that scripture ultimately favors imbibing but agrees
to water down his wine a bit.

Now, Christian attitudes toward alcohol
vary pretty widely. Many fundamentalists eschew all consumption, while
others — Catholics and Episcopals (like me) — make it a central part of
every religious service through the celebration of Holy Communion, the
miraculous transubstantiation of wine into the very blood of Jesus
Christ.

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Of course, there are communities of faith all along
the spectrum. While playing golf with a Presbyterian minister, I asked
why churches of that denomination seem to use grape juice rather than
wine when celebrating communion. He told me about Thomas Welch, a
19th-century temperance advocate and Presbyterian minister who
advocated the use of “non-fermented wine” (i.e., Welch’s grape juice)
in religious ceremonies. His idea spread reasonably well among certain
protestant churches but really caught on as a secular beverage and
made his family a fortune.

Oddly
(for a former editor of Esquire’s wine page), Jacobs doesn’t discuss
the arcane rules surrounding kosher (“pure”) wine. My personal favorite
is the rule that only “Sabbath observant Jews” handle all aspects of
production from the crush through fermentation and bottling. In
addition, all ingredients used to fine and clarify the wine must also
be kosher. This is an important point for vegans, too, since these
ingredients can include egg whites, gelatin and isinglass (derived from
fish).

Mevushal wine, on the other hand, is made kosher by
boiling. This process traditionally created wines that were all but
undrinkable, although the advent of flash pasteurization can satisfy
the letter of the law with minimal deleterious effect on the final
product.

At points in his memoir, Jacobs shifts away from
biblical prohibitions and focuses on good deeds. For instance, he
brings a bottle (non-kosher!) to a co-worker who has had a run of bad
luck, as mandated by Proverbs 31:6, “Give strong drink to him who is
perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress.”

Jacobs refers to such
scripture as “Emily Post-like tips that are both wise and easy to
follow.” It’s certainly the kind of biblical literalism I can get
behind.